Said Old Gentleman Gay, “On a Thanksgiving Day,
If you want a good time, then give something away.”
So he sent a fat turkey to Shoemaker Price,
And the shoemaker said, “What a big bird! how nice!
And since a good dinner’s before me, I ought
To give poor Widow Lee the small chicken I bought.”

“This fine chicken, oh, see!” said the pleased Widow Lee,
“And the kindness that sent it, how precious to me!
I would like to make some one as happy as I—
I’ll give Washerwoman Biddy my big pumpkin pie.”
“And oh, sure,” Biddy said, “’tis the queen of all pies
Just to look at its yellow face gladdens my eyes.

Now it’s my turn, I think; and a sweet ginger cake
For the motherless Finigan children I’ll bake.”
“A sweet cake, all our own! ’Tis too good to be true!”
Said the Finigan children, Rose, Denny, and Hugh;
“It smells sweet of spice, and we’ll carry a slice
To poor little Lame Jake—who has nothing that’s nice.”

“Oh, I thank you, and thank you!” said little Lame Jake;
“Oh, what beautiful, beautiful, beautiful cake!
And oh, such a big slice! I will save all the crumbs,
And will give ’em to each little sparrow that comes!”
And the sparrows they twittered as if they would say,
Like Old Gentleman Gay, “On a Thanksgiving Day,

If you want a good time, then give something away.”

—Marian Douglas.

A Treasury of Verse for Little Children, edited by M. G. Edgar, illustrated by Willy Pogany. This book, America, was published in New York by the Macmillan Company in 1923, and the copyright was not renewed, so it is now in the public domain.

Congratulations are in order for President-Elect Barack Obama

and his historic achievement of being elected the first African-American President of the United States. No matter what your politics or whether you agree with his policies or not, you must admit that history has been made tonight and it’s a good history. It’s good for our country, it’s good for our people, and it’s good for the world to see that freedom and democracy work.

America’s election of the junior senator from Illinois is not only historic in the obvious sense, it is historic in a deep and healing way. This nation has been plagued by racism since it’s inception. We have endured civil wars, riots, inequity, the civil right movement, and countless other challenges, none more felt than by the African-American community. This long lasting and deep seated racism is not only felt in the black communities and urban neighborhoods, it effects all Americans, from the immigrant workers to the most affluent CEOs. It affects how we act with one another, how we speak to each other, and many times it affects us so deeply that these feelings cannot even be uttered in public. Barack Obama’s decisive election win is one step further away from America’s tarnished past, and toward a more united future.

It is my sincerest hope that today’s election has proved to any doubters, white or black, conservative or liberal, that in this land of the free, anyone can accomplish anything no matter what the obsticals, sterotypes or preconceptions.

This is the United States of America and we are stronger when we stand as one nation, under God. We may not agree on many things, but we are all united in the fact that we are Americans and we can stand proud in front of the entire world as a shining example of democracy at it’s best.

In the months and years ahead, I will be sure to voice my opinions when I disagree with Obama and the liberals in Congress as I have always done. It is my hope that he will serve like many past presidents and govern more to the center and do the peoples work, not his parties. I trust that he will live up to his campaign promise to reach across the aisle to bring Americans closer together and work to end the divisiveness in the country. I will give him the benefit of the doubt to fix our economy, but will be watching very closely for any dangerous or civil rights infringing policy making. I will also prepare to elect a Republican president in four years.

However, I am a patriotic American and I will stand with my President against this nation’s enemies at home and abroad. I am proud of our democracy even when “my side” doesn’t win. I am proud that Americans can, and have, looked past skin color (and names) and were able to choose Obama to lead this nation.

It may seem strange but despite my guy losing and am proud to have voted today in this historic election. Most of all tonight I am proud to be an American!

The Obama campaign may be ignoring national and/or state election and gaming laws. Specifically, for offering the chance to “Win a front row seat to history” if you make a donation.

This is not the first time the Obama camp has tried to pull off this scheme. Last July, the campaign was forced by gambling regulators to change the rules to include the opportunity to non-donors to conform with the states gaming laws. The Minnesota Gambling Control Board and the Minnesota Department of Public Safety considered it an illegal lottery at the time.

Of course this close to the election I wonder if anyone will have the fortitude to confront him on this. The story seems dead in the water as the national news outlets have not picked it up. The only one reporting on it that I can see is Mike Parker of CBS Chicago, and even he’s a bit wishy washy. He questions if federal election laws may be broken. Although, it may be local gambling laws that may have been broken. He also reports that the Obama campiagn declined to comment.

From the Obama campaign website:

“You could be there with Barack on Election Night when the results come in.

We’re planning a big event that will include tens of thousands of supporters in Grant Park in downtown Chicago.

Some of the best seats are reserved for 10 people — 5 first-time donors and 5 previous donors — who make a donation one last time before Sunday at midnight.

You and a guest will be flown to Chicago, put up in a hotel, and brought backstage for the biggest night of the campaign.

Make a donation and you and a guest could join Barack on Election Night.

The Stranger removed it’s story and the link is now bouncing back to Drudge where it originally got it’s legs. They undoubtedly heard a few voices or saw the threat of lawsuit. Not ones to take any responsibility they continue with a discussion on their blog, The Slog and now call it the “Hell House Freakout”.

As the original published story is newsworthy, I have decided to reprint the article (with addresses removed) for those interested to see the original and decide for yourselves what kind of publication The Stranger is. Those who wish to contact the staff of the Stranger are encouraged to do so.

UPDATE- Nov. 2 10am:
The Stranger is now doing some serious back peddling. A new post on the Slog is now claiming that they removed the article because they received “death threats”. Since their personal addresses were posted in comments of the original story, they claim that they are now simply protecting their staff. If that was true, why didn’t they simply moderate the comments?

Well Stranger Staff, It seems you don’t like it as much when the shoe is on the other foot, do you? As for those “death” threats? I don’t buy it for a minute. The editors and staff probably saw the err of their ways by being threatened alright. Threatened with law suits and loss of advertising revenue.

REPRINT: HELL HOUSES– Originally published on Nov. 1st by the Seattle newspaper The Stranger.

Hell Houses
Topography of Terror: The Eastside Edition

By Stranger Staff
Cobwebs and witches are for children and morons. If you’re looking for the most hair-raising Halloween horrors, try scouring the streets of the Eastside. That’s where we found the most pants-wettingly scary houses, sure to give you night terrors well past Halloween and all the way until November 4. Because in an election year, nothing’s more terrifying than the future.

-ADDRESS REMOVED- Mercer Island

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear,” wrote British philosopher Edmund Burke in 1756. It’s as true today as ever. Case in point: this bloodcurdling Mercer Island lawn display, a quadruple whammy of Republican propaganda capable of driving the most reasonable citizen to insanity. By day, it’s a standard collection of yard signs on a well-manicured lawn. But at night, it’s a GOP graveyard, where the yard-sign tombstones are unearthed by zombie candidates hungry for brains. Do you have what it takes to drive a stake through the heart of zombie Dino Rossi or blast a shotgun into the chest of zombie Dave Reichert or fight off the reanimated ashes of Steve Litzow, swirling out of that terrifying urn? Run.

-ADDRESS REMOVED- Mercer Island

Hungarian peasants have an old and terrible story about “the tree of death,” which by some trick of evil had lurking in its twisted branches the “dark lord,” the master of the underworld, the evil that brings all things to their end. It was there in the tree, waiting, watching, and preying on the living. Passing this dead—nay, murdered—tree on Mercer Island takes us back to the scariest bowels of Hungary, only instead of one dark lord, this tree is possessed by a trinity of evil, represented quite fittingly by cheap glossy crassness tacked over mercilessly hacked nature.

-ADDRESS REMOVED- Bellevue

What is more terrifying than this edifice, in which there is no door, few windows, and no handholds by which one might scale its faceless heights to register complaint? One half-expects loudspeakers on the roof to be blaring Orson Welles voice, from his movie version of Franz Kafka’s The Trial: A man comes from the country, begging admittance to the law. But the guard cannot admit him. Can he hope to enter at a later time? “That is possible,” says the guard. The man tries to peer through the entrance. He had been taught that the law should be accessible to every man. “Do not attempt to enter without my permission,” says the guard. “I am very powerful, but I am the least of all the guards.” Without a doubt, this is no home to man, but a monolithic holding cell packed floor-to-ceiling with bubbling black goo.

-ADDRESS REMOVED- Mercer Island

That John McCain sign is screamingly scary enough in the early-evening light, like a little flag for an evil army of pint-sized ghouls marching through the leafy streets of Mercer Island. And that zigzagging, funereal fence behind it? That is the sign of an isolated home, sheltering isolated minds—bristling, cold and black, a thousand points of death—and the kind of house that gives trick-or-treaters miniboxes of raisins. Beware.

-ADDRESS REMOVED- Bellevue

This most terrifying tableau gains its power from what’s not shown but easily imagined: the presence of John McCain and Sarah Palin not in name but bodily form, striding triumphantly onto this balcony like a trailer-park Eva Perón and her cryogenically defrosting old-man running mate. Down below, the desperate, unemployed masses huddle in the shrubs, their bellies roiled by hunger and heartbreak, their cold bare ankles stung by the blades of wet grass. Or… could those be tiny tentacles or the haunted bubbling of mass graves or the desperate clutching fingers of a special-needs child? Flee, and don’t look back.

-ADDRESS REMOVED- Medina

Like an oversized cousin of John McCain’s aged, brown iguana teeth, this foreboding fence is busy keeping immigrants out and Jesus’s love within. How like the wily immigrant is the frightening foliage, as it insidiously creeps and scratches at Real America’s doorstep! How mighty the speculum of Dino Rossi—an army of dead-baby ghosts at his back—aborting civil rights before civil rights can abort him first! Who knows what liberal bogeymen lurk outside this fence’s cherished sanctum? The nightmare has just begun for you, Republican fence.

It is at best an attempt at voter intimidation, and at worst a precursor to a liberal, socialist government’s attempt to subvert free speech.

Exerpt from the article:“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear,” wrote British philosopher Edmund Burke in 1756. It’s as true today as ever. Case in point: this bloodcurdling Mercer Island lawn display, a quadruple whammy of Republican propaganda capable of driving the most reasonable citizen to insanity. By day, it’s a standard collection of yard signs on a well-manicured lawn. But at night, it’s a GOP graveyard, where the yard-sign tombstones are unearthed by zombie candidates hungry for brains. Do you have what it takes to drive a stake through the heart of zombie Dino Rossi or blast a shotgun into the chest of zombie Dave Reichert or fight off the reanimated ashes of Steve Litzow, swirling out of that terrifying urn? Run.

This is very frightening to me. America is on the precipice of becoming a dangerous tyrannical regime bent on distributing wealth and suppressing the voice of the American people. It is a slippery slope we are on if we continue to allow this paper and others like it to operate in this manner.

Not only does this fascist rag print the addresses of ordinary citizens in the article, in my opinion also is inciting violence against the political party members. The fact that a so-called “newspaper” would so easily publish the addresses of these people, simply wishing to express their political views, apparently giving no thought as to the consequences. Or, that the paper published this information knowing full well the potential consequenses, should be enough to give any patriotic American citizen pause.

One reader, in an effort to bring a sense of fairness to these liberal propagandists, has compiled a list of The Stanger’s staff and posted it as a comment of the papers website. Just in case the paper decides to remove this comment (they, don’t like free speech remember), I have published it here.

A warning to my readers-Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, but a nice letter or three to these editors, publishers, and writers may send a strong signal that “what is good for the goose is good for the gander”.

If you subscribe to this paper, cancel. If you advertise in this garbage rag, pull your ads now. If you live in the Seattle area, call these editors or better yet, show up at their front door and ask them why they think it is acceptable to endanger the public.